Car companies have already begun to design cars that can drive themselves.
But to make these smart cars really useful, they’ll also need smart roads.
Some computer scientists envision a smart traffic intersection. How smart? Well, it can keep traffic flowing at least 10 times faster than old-fashioned intersections.

The cars we drive have gotten ever more sophisticated. They can just about park themselves; they tell us if we’re drifting out of our lane; they can prevent skids. Some even automatically apply the brakes if they sense that a collision is imminent.

Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are developing a car that can do all of those things and more — it can actually drive itself. Imagine that commute to work.

The car, developed with General Motors, is by all appearances a normal Cadillac SRX crossover. That’s by design, according to Jarrod Snider, the chief engineer on the project.